Bleeding Blue (if it's all the same to you)
by FlickingCandle
Summary: Pixal's memory drive is compatible with Zane's, and vice versa. When Zane is scrapped instead of Pixal, neither of them are content as a side program, and they share a body. Meanwhile, the other ninja tear into the tournament to get back what's theirs.
1. Chapter 1

I'm Bleeding Blue, If It's All The Same To You

Description: A rewrite story of my Pixane Merge AU.

 _REBOOT INITIATED-_

 _REBOOT IN PROGRESS_

 _8% COMPLETED: BIOCOMPONENTS 1A-10D FUNCTIONAL_

 _22% COMPLETED: BIOCOMPONENTS 11A-33A FUNCTIONAL_

 _45% COMPLETED: BIOCOMPONENTS 33B-77X FUNCTIONAL_

 _78% COMPLETED: BIOCOMPONENT 102C FUNCTION IMPARED, SEEK REPAIRS_

 _99% COMPLETED: MEMORY LOGS #67791-67800 INCOMPLETE_

 _100% COMPLETED_

Pixal's eyes snapped open. Her left eye- Biocomponent 102C, the alert told her- was flickering on and off, and she shut it down. Other than that, she had sustained almost no damage from-

From-

From-

When?

Pixal closed her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on. She was in unfamiliar surroundings, with no idea of how she got there, and no idea why she'd been shut down. How could-

She began to sift through her memory files.

The most recent ones were damaged, but there were still segments that she could gather information from. She had a, a fight, from what she could piece together. It was the most likely reason she had taken damage, even as slight as it was. And the assailant had something to instantly take her out, her and-

Zane.

That's right- Zane had almost been online, the memory transfer was almost done. Then there had been a man who came, who talked, and then nothing. No- there was static, then nothing. She-

Her silver eyelids closed tighter, as if it would bring back the memory. Or clear her head. She would have been fine with either.

But she couldn't stall forever, she had to open her eyes and figure out the present, rather than trying to realize the past. Who taught her that? Was it Zane? No time.

Green eyes opened, and Pixal looked around the area. Everything would've been the same dark grey if not for the light from her eye, an emerald glow that doused the stone walls and floors in a sickly color.

 _OBJECTIVE: ESCAPE._

An alert popped up in her vision, and Pixal frowned. No. She was getting Zane, wherever he was. The blocky letters slid out of her sight, and if Pixal imagined they flickered away almost sheepishly.

She swept a gaze around the room and moved her limbs experimentally. The lack of chains almost surprised her, there were none around her ankles or wrists, nor could she detect any kind of tracker on her body. The most her captors done to restrain her was to lock the door.

Wonderful, she was about as restrained as the average hamster.

There was literally nothing to stop her as she stood up and shook the door with a loud metal rattling. Nobody came to it to check. There- there was even a window! Maybe they wanted her to escape?

Or maybe they just never intended for her to wake up.

That was a haunting thought. Pixal needed to have less of those. Cyrus would always complain when she brought up the worst scenario, even if he asked her to read them off.

 _OBJECTIVE: FIND ZANE._

Right. Sometimes she disliked the little prompts immensely, other times they were... All of her direction and common sense.

She took a few steps back into the middle of the cell and started a scan. There were a few small boxes in the shadows, but the contents of all but one of them were unidentifiable. The one that she could gather information from contained a cracked circuit board, a drill, and a tangle of wires, all clipped into pieces that shared no pattern in length. Nothing she needed.

There were bars on a window to the right of her, each one about 6 centimeters apart and 2.5 centimeters thick. She could make easy work of it, and probably be able to slip through.

She opened up the her wrist compartments and started to saw through the bars. As expected, her little circle saw cleaved through them, and she was soon able to set them lightly on the floor.

Pixal experimentally poked her head through the little window, and... Her shoulders wouldn't fit. She wiggled, trying to fit them in. They didn't.

So, after a moment to think, she decided to tear off her arm.

It was fairly easy to do, and not the slightest bit revolting, as it would be to a human. If a human were to do this, they would be considered insane. But she was a robot. She got a free pass.

 _OBJECTIVE: FIND ALTERNATE SOLUTION._

She cut it off with the smile of someone who knew they were doing something they weren't supposed to do. The red slunk out of her vision again, defeated.

It didn't take long, because her limbs were connected mostly by electromagnets in the the case that they came off, and to allow complete mobility for the android. The rest were just wires and dark blue Siglium, a synthetic liquid that worked to cool her systems. It was almost like android blood. Whenever a droid like her was damaged, the Siglium would keep flowing until either they used their self-repair system to patch it up, or cut off the flow entirely, which usually lead to overheating.

In her case of losing an arm, there was nothing to overheat, so she cut the flow off, rerouting it. The arm bled a little bit, so she turned it upside-down and let it drain.

A few seconds she stood there. Watching her detached arm, upside down, in her other hand, spilling out blood like a soda can with almost nothing in it until it got turned ground-face. Wondering how her life got up to that point.

She shook it once, letting the last droplets out, then reached up to drop it into the window. The arm landed with a dull thud- a cushioned fall. How fortunate.

After that, it was fairly simple to get through the window. Dealing with the other side, not so much.

 **A/N:** This is the rewrite! For further details about why this came about, please refer to the A/N chapter of 'if you take one last step'.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a sharp clang as Pixal's two feet hit the floor in a crouch. It was dark in the separate cell, and the only way she could see was by lighting her functional eye up further.

She scanned the floor, her eye like a green floodlight. Android parts were scattered all around- a hand, stuck in a desperate grasp, part of a leg, wires and coolant pipes- so many, and they were all frozen in a congealed, sickly-looking puddle of Siglium.

Her hands clenched at her sides. Yet...

Pixal stepped into it, marching forward to her goal, and snapped her head up. There was no reason to be afraid, especially since she had just taken off her own arm with barley a wince. There was no reason.

Androids weren't human, and there was nothing wrong about the sight other than the fact that an android had been- that there was a threat-

 _Snap._

Something sounded- just underneath her f-

A gun went off, and tore through metal.

Cole clenched his fist as he watched Lloyd easily outmaneuver the traps in the tunnels. His movements were so smooth, refined, and not a bit out of practice, unlike the rest of them.

The Earth Ninja himself could barely get past the tripwires (especially since nobody stopped to help him-!), so used to the simplicity and brutality of almost a year of lumberjack life. He had lived in the Flitting Forest, one of the four seasonal forests of Ninjago, and where it seemed like eternal fall. It was where he was drawn to after Zane's death. There was a call there, something so desperately familiar that wanted him.

He'd stayed there for a long, long time, taking in the feeling of want that the forest just seemed to exude as easily as sunbathing. His ninja lifestyle was pushed back into a corner of his directionless life, left untouched and avoided like a long-dead spider beneath a cup.

"We have to move fast," Lloyd urged, voice cold. He moved ahead of the team, not looking back.

"Wai-" Cole bit back a yell. The person behind him stared at him for a moment, then their attention went back to the ground, and not triggering traps.

When Lloyd glanced back with a hard look that almost seemed like a glare, that was when Cole realized that the other's mask was pulled up. He knew that his own wasn't, but for the lingering second that Lloyd spared to watch him, his hands froze in their places. They almost moved from his sides, they almost threw the hood over his head and hid his face.

But Lloyd's face was empty.

His eyes were like dull diamonds, cold and sharp and hard and glowing in all the wrong ways. They bore into his own eyes, and suddenly Cole was aware of how tall Lloyd has grown and how much darker his eyes are and-

The green eyes looked away, and the world turned again.

Behind him, Jay complained at Cole to get moving, and he swiveled around to growl at him. He really didn't feel any pure hatred towards the other person, not anymore, but there was still a lingering bitterness that seemed to grow every time he found Jay's electric blue eyes.

Something inside of him took that opportunity to whisper about eyes and green flashes and regret-

He turned around, again.

Lloyd was already clear of the tripwires, and his back was getting smaller.

And the part of his mind that whispered regret now is chanting ironic- ironic- ironic-, because Lloyd barely paused before stepping out, Lloyd didn't look back, and Lloyd was leaving them behind.

Cole agreed with everything it said.

 **A/N:** Horray for bad mood changes~

(also for a part of writing this I was eating cottage cheese from the container in the middle of the night in the dark so factor that in when I say I am not feeling the best right now)


End file.
